The use of postage indicia in place of traditional postage stamps has become wide spread. For example, solutions for generating and printing valid postage indicia using a home or office processor-based system, such as a personal computer, have been provided by Stamps.com Inc., Los Angeles, Calif. (the assignee of the present application) for a number of years. The postage indicia generated by such processor-based systems has typically been an information based indicia (IBI), wherein a barcode (e.g., two-dimensional barcode) carries information useful for validating the indicia when placed in the mail stream.
Such solutions have facilitated ad-hoc generation and printing of postage indicia, such as to generate and print individual postage indicia for a particular mail item. For example, during or upon completion of a letter or other document in a word processing application, such as WORD available from Microsoft Corporation, Redmond Wash., a user may utilize a web interface provided by Stamps.com Inc. to generate and print valid postage indicia for use in posting that document. Information based indicia of such postage indicia may include information uniquely linking the postage indicia to the mail item (e.g., addressee information).
The foregoing solutions have additionally facilitated batch generating and printing of postage indicia, such as to generate and print plural postage indicia for later use with various mail items. For example, a user may utilize a web interface provided by Stamps.com Inc. to generate and print a sheet of “generic” postage indicia, perhaps using uniquely serialized stock, for use with mail items much like a more traditional sheet of stamps may be used. Such generic postage indicia is not linked to a particular mail item, thus the information based indicia thereof would not include information uniquely linking the postage indicia to the mail item. Such information based indicia may, however, include information identifying the user creating the postage indicia, the user's account used in creating the postage indicia, etc.
Although providing a very convenient solution for providing valid postage to individuals and businesses upon demand, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the foregoing solutions may not address every situation. For example, a user may not be comfortable with processor-based technology and thus be reluctant to utilize such systems to generate and print postage. A user, although regularly using such processor-based system, may have insufficient supplies on hand (e.g., label stock, printer ink/toner, etc.) to print postage indicia. Similarly, a user may be traveling and thus not have a processor-based system available for their use in generating and printing postage indicia. Accordingly, such a user may attempt to purchase traditional postage at a retail location or other point of sale (POS) (e.g., vending machine).
Typically, only a particular denomination of postage stamp (e.g., stamps valued for 1 oz. first class postage, which today is $0.41) is available at most points of sale, such as retail locations outside of a postal facility. Moreover, retail locations often do not carry a deep stock of postage, in order to avoid having appreciable monies tied up in an item usually provided for patron convenience and which runs a risk of becoming stale with a change in postal rates. Accordingly, if postage is available at all at a point of sale, it is often not available in an exact denomination desired by a user.